Pisco Party

I'm turning out to be such a terrible blogger already. I've only made two posts so far and there's nearly a 3 week difference between this and my last post.

Life has been moving on as usual. Last weekend Alan and I hosted a Pisco Sour party for our friend J. Riley. Pisco is a type of peruvian alcohol that he brought back from his many trips to Peru and back. When mixed with sugar, lime juice, egg whites and ice it makes a deliciously tart drink. It was a lot of fun and not too much work. For the occasion, I made a type of peruvian cookie called alphajores. It's a dulce de leche cream sandwiched between two crunchy shortbread cookies and sprinkled with powdered sugar. The coolest thing about making them was making the dulche de leche. You submerge a can of sweetened condensed milk in boiling water and boil for 2 hours. The milk caramelizes inside the can! They actually were some of the most delicious cookies I've ever tasted. Very different from my usual dabblings in baking with chocolate. I also made guacamole for the first time and I can't say that I liked it all that much. I am not really a fair judge since the only guacamole I've ever liked was had in Costa Rica. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it and ate almost all of it up.

After hanging out in our apartment a little after midnight, we all headed to Stir to check out the scene. The original plan was to go downtown to find some dancing, but J.Riley wasn't feeling up to the trek. I had been to Stir one time before and I found it to be quite dull and lifeless. This time it was full of people and the music was great, although it was still a bit lackluster. Fortunately we came in a group of 13 and promptly began to dance our tushies off. It added a certain zest to the place. I induced my natural skills of observation and realized that the problem with Stir is the crowd. Everyone there definitely fit into the Upper East Side stereotype and were either much too self-conscious or too egotistical to just have some fun! I'm not a huge fan of my very own neighborhood. All in all, I think everyone in our group had a great time although Alan and I headed home before anyone else so I can't really say!

The Cake Saga

So with ridiculous optimism in my baking abilities, I decided to volunteer to make a friends' wedding cake. Some of you may think that this is not such an unreasonable task to assign myself, but let me inform you that I have NEVER made a wedding cake before. I have only assisted my aunt in making a wedding cake for my own reception. As a result, my level of anxiety about making this cake has only begun to increase with each passing day. To make the situation even more compounded, the cake needs to be made upstate (in a place I do not reside), I need to make a cake to feed 200 people (it will be the lone dessert for the night), and I am a bridesmaid in the wedding. What was I thinking? Seriously.

This wedding is April 14th and I have yet to practice making the cake in such a grand scale. The bottom layer is going to be a full 16" round and I'm a bit nervous about that. I have to cover each tier with a stretchy sugary substance called fondant in order to give the cake a smooth, clean look. It is difficult enough to cover a 10" round tier with fondant, much less a 16" round. Needless to say, I am feeling a bit nervous. I am also nervous in terms of stacking four tiers of such a large size. Never done that before!

I have an idea of what the cake will look like. I am thinking a pale sage green colored fondant, a pink striped chocolate transfer sheet around the bottom of each tier, and beautiful gumpaste cherry blossom scattered along the cake. I also found the most adorable cake topper that actually looks a bit like my friend and her fiance. Here are a few visuals...

On a positive and mouth-watering note, the cake will taste absolutely delicious! I am making a fabulous, dense chocolate cake, filling each layer with a flavored ganache (perhaps orange), and covering it all in vanilla buttercream and fondant. It will be served with vanilla ice cream and a strawberry. Heaven on a plate! Yummy!

I am going to fit in a practice session this weekend and I pray that my design goes well. Otherwise I am in absolute trouble with a capital T! Lesson learned on this one...

AndyP

King of Blogging

So my friend J.Riley is the king of bloggin and after a recent photo post,I am left inspired. I have the need for a creative outlet these days and what better way to channel than blogging? Let me start by saying there are only a a few blogs that I find worth my time to read, J.Riley's and some baking blogs. I am left pondering if the pages of this journal will be grazed by the eyes of many or few... The greatest thing about this is that perhaps my family will take a peek into my world in "The Big Apple".



For those of you that don't know, my days are filled with an exploration of bodily functions performed by a beautiful 8 month old girl that is my charge. I deal with a lot of poop, saliva and I usually find numerous varieties of baby food in my hair by the end of the day. Despite what some may think, being a nanny is not the easiest job on the planet. However, it is filled with moments of such purity and joyfulness that I couldn't think of anything better (except having my own child of course). Attn: Alan! Today, the little one is sick with a nasty cough and runny nose. I am just praying that she will be better soon, the poor little peanut.




Speaking of which, I gotta go because she's awake! Stay tuned for more...